Ricky Gervais: What period or moment in your life brought you the most joy?

The question

What period or moment in your life brought you the most joy?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

Asked in 52 of the 131 consecutive instalments of The Guardian's The Q&A harvested on 2026-08-29.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Ricky Gervais

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here

I can't remember a time when I was happier than now, to be honest – though that's always been the case.

The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 April 2014 source ↗

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Una Stubbs British actress, television personality, and dancer

When I am painting.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 April 2016 source ↗

Doris Day American actress and singer

My childhood summers in Trenton, Ohio, and starting work at Warner Bros.

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, April 1995 source ↗

Jonathan Safran Foer American novelist

Leaving the hospital.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 22 June 2012 source ↗

Siri Hustvedt American novelist, essayist, poet

I have a penchant for happiness. I have experienced euphoria before a migraine, which may not count, but I have also felt immense happiness leaning back in a chair in sunlight, puttering in my garden, reading, dancing, immediately after giving birth and when writing.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 August 2017 source ↗

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Question What does happiness look like for you when life is going well? Identity & self

Playing with a dog. And we’re both drunk.

Recorded The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 10 August 2017 source ↗

Question What one change would most improve the quality of your daily life? Daily life

A dog. (I don't have one because we're back and forth over the Atlantic and it would be cruel to leave it.)

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 April 2014 source ↗

Question What most recently moved you to tears? Identity & self

Over a YouTube clip about animals. "Laboratory animals see sunlight for the first time", or "elephant mourns his best friend the goat". I watch something like that every day and I'm always in pieces.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 April 2014 source ↗

Question Which quality in your friends matters most to you? Relationships

It’s hard to narrow it down, because I want them to have a bit of everything—humor, kindness, integrity, intelligence, tolerance (they need lots of that). But if I had to choose just one it would probably be loyalty.

Recorded The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 10 August 2017 source ↗

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